


Motes of Possibility

by steelneena



Series: CR 2 Oneshots and Short Series [27]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, MAJOR SPOILERS EP 111, New enemies, Old Friends, What Ifs, identity crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:00:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26690296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelneena/pseuds/steelneena
Summary: Somewhere, out in the snowy desolation, he's waiting for them.Somewhere, in the cold and the white and the emptiness, they'll find him.Whoever he might be.A collection of possible futures, from the perspectives of each of the Nein.
Relationships: The Mighty Nein & Mollymauk Tealeaf
Series: CR 2 Oneshots and Short Series [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1280990
Comments: 19
Kudos: 67





	1. 1. Beauregard

**Author's Note:**

> VINDICATION IS SWEET. 
> 
> I have been well rewarded for keeping the faith all this time.
> 
> unbeta'd sorry.

The wind is blistering cold, the storm driving, but Beauregard does not care. With numb fingers and rash red cheeks, she faces the blizzard head on. She has walked towards death so many times now. Faced demons and dragons, demi-gods and her dad, ended a war, freed an island, and saved countless lives.

But not his.

Never his.

Caleb had been _so_ adamant that they go. _So_ determined that they desecrate that homage to their great failure. To her personal nightmare. They could have done it without facing Mollymauk’s grave. They could have, she _knows_. They wouldn’t have needed to speak to his body. They wouldn’t have needed to dig him up.

(More to the point, she hadn’t wanted to.)

Not that any of that mattered anymore.

Not since Jester had scryed on… _him_.

In her mind’s eye, Beau can imagine him the way Jester described. Grinning, intensely driven, striding forth with purpose through the snow, his shoulders set firm against the wind whipping at his face. His eyes red, his skin lavender, and his features familiar, but his poise and stance unrecognizable, his expression alien.

Its worse than him staying dead, she thinks, that he’s up and about but not _himself_. Molly would be furious if he knew someone else was wearing his body.

(Though it occurs to her how hypocritical that sounds, it doesn’t make her any less staunch on the matter.)

Vess walks beside them, the angry blighting shadow that lingers beside their group. They’d discussed what to do about her, now that the connection to _Lucien_ and his Tomb Takers was evident, now that they grew ever closer to overtaking the mysterious tiefling and his loyal follower. How they’d try to play it. What they might do. Vess was a mutual enemy, she’d reasoned. Perhaps, they could use that to their advantage. Perhaps it might lull the tabaxi into a false sense of security, and then the Nein could steal away with their friend’s stolen body in the night.

(The bitter worry gnaws at her stomach worse than the deepest of hungers. That Molly is lost to them forever. That Molly might never be regained.)

But she’s an Expositer now. She has some clout. Some pull.

To save him, she knows she would do anything.

What she doesn’t expect is the ambush.

The snow, drifted in huge sheer slopes, buffets up suddenly, billowing into their faces. It stings her eyes, blinding her, and Beau rears back with the rest as her foot catches on a taught rope and they tumble into the powder before them. There’s a _snkt_ and a distinct click that reminds her of Veth’s crossbow, and when she looks up, her nightmare is warm and breathing before her, exhalation curling like a dragon’s smoke from his mouth, parted just enough for shining sharp teeth to glare in the sun.

His form bows over her as he comes to rest on his haunches. That achingly familiar face bares an even more devastating smirk, one that’s more danger than bravado, instead of the other way around. Just off enough to feel wrong, but not wrong enough to distinguish the differences the way she’d like.

It’s unfair, completely and utterly unfair. But that’s hardly where her mind should be when his scimitar’s sharp tip is ever so delicately lifting her gaze by the chin.

“My my, whatever do we have here?”

Though the others are beside her, equally stunned still, Beau cannot bring herself to think rationally. That voice, that _voice_ –

(It’s _wrong_. It’s _all_ wrong.)

Her fists clench beside her in the snow, and her jaw tightens, but her eyes are rapt upon his, which look into her instead of at her, in all their opaque mystery. 

(It’s wrong because it’s right. Exactly the same as she remembers. Her heart is pounding and she wants to scream, to fling herself forward, tackle him to the ground, pound the wrongness away-)

And there’s Cree, a void against the glare of the white sky.

“It’s _them_ ,” she says, disgust lacing her tone.

That grin, that mocking smile, widens. “Welcome to Eiselcross, _Mighty Nein_. And thank you for bringing me such an hospitable gift. We meet again, Darogna.”

The nightmare is real.

Beau is living it.


	2. 2. Jester

It’s strange. Generally, when she scrys and sees a place, then when they get there, it looks familiar. But the wide empty swath of white is the same no matter where Jester looks. Too similar and too impossible to identify all at once. Which means, of course, that it’s impossible to tell if they’ve caught up to where _he_ was when she spied on him. The snow hasn’t let up in the two days they’ve been traveling, and any footprints are long filled in, if they’re in the right place, that is.

Though its impossible to tell, she hasn’t given up trying.

She shivers, but it’s not because she’s cold. No, the wind and heavy damp snow do not bother Jester the way they might another. She shivers to recall the look on his face when she’d seen him. A certain intensity. A drive, as though he were charging forward toward something.

Maybe destiny.

Maybe fate.

Maybe that crazy weird city.

But whatever it was, the gleam there hadn’t been Molly.

(More than once, Jester has pretended to be him. She recalls the sparkle of mischief, how it changed that unknowable quality of his gaze from something unnerving to something friendly, comfortable.)

With distress, she looks around once more, a little frantic, a little hopeful.

Mostly nervous.

What if he doesn’t want anything to do with them? What if he told Cree to ignore her? What if what happened to Cree with Molly is going to happen to them with Lucien?

(Oh, but now there’s a guilty knot in her stomach.)

After everything that’s happened, she just wants to pull him into a hug, wrap him in her arms and pet at his hair the way her Momma used to do for her. Maybe, if she did, he’d remember them, and tell Cree to go away, and they could go back into Caleb’s new tower and just stay there until the storm ended and Cree was a snowcat instead of a tabaxi and Molly wouldn’t have to find an excuse to stay with them like last time.

For a time, Jester lets herself imagine what it would be like. How they could all continue on like nothing had ever changed, laughing in the baths of the Xhorhaus, or visiting her Momma and the Brenattos…except that Molly had never been to Xhorha. Or met her Momma. Or even knew that Veth was Veth and not Nott, and the more she thought about it, the more it hurt to consider.

She’d been so powerless.

So _helpless_. Chained away, immobile, only able to listen as the battle went on just feet away.

How Molly had died within earshot and they hadn’t known it until it was far, far too late.

(She’s _supposed_ to be a healer.)

Tears bead and freeze on her cheeks, and she sniffles, unable to stop herself. What if he does hate them? They left him! They left him alone in the ground, his worst nightmare, and then never looked back. Not really. Not until now.

Casually, as she walks, she bends to lift some snow and doodles in it, sparking to life the scry spell once more. Artagan’s gentle hands caress hers, subsuming her sight for the moment, and they speed through the snowy haze, deeper across the tundra.

There he is again, staring determinedly into the distance, gaze teasing her. But there is nothing discernable enough around him to make the difference, and so she pulls away from the spell, ending it with his visage impressioned upon her mind.

“What’s wrong, Jester?” Yasha asks in a low voice.

“Do you think I should message him? Do you think that he would answer? Maybe…maybe it was just Cree. What if she’s told him terrible things about us?! What if she’s lied to him!”

Yasha huffs and looks around nervously. Ahead of them is Vess Derogna. Childishly, Jester sticks out her tongue at the mage’s back.

“Maybe? I don’t know. What if…”

There’s nothing but the sound of their boots in the snow, somehow muted despite the open air. Everything feels close. Personal.

“What if it’s n-not him? What if you send him a message and he can’t respond because he’d not there? Jester- Can you tell? If it’s him?”

Jester bit her lip. “I-I don’t know.”

(And she’s not sure she’s brave enough to try.)

And yet, she’s doing it anyways.

“Molly?” She’s never heard herself so tentative. “Molly is that you? Please answer us, we’re scared. We-we love you.”

It’s short. Shorter than any of her usual messages, but it does what it’s meant to.

“Who is this? What’s going on?” The words are hissed more than spoken, and Jester tenses up. There’s a long silence, during which Jester holds her breathe. “What do you want?”

“We’re your friends.” Her voice cracks. “We love you.”

There’s no response, and Jester hangs her head.


	3. 3. Caleb

Caleb is made for the cold weather. His Zemnian blood demands that he know, deep within through inherited memory, that the ice and wind can be endured, that hardship brought by sleet and chill can be overcome. What he has never been prepared for, however, is the cold within his own heart. There is no guarding against that, no warm coat, no magic flame which can thaw the fear, that gnawing edge of desperation.

_What have they wrought?_

He cannot help thinking it to himself, over and over again as they trudge through the endless white expanse. They left him there, they spoke to Cree, they continued on their journey. His grave dogged their steps all the same – they’d not left behind his memory, painted him on their skin, and into their actions. But memory is not enough – _never enough –_ to keep a person alive, no matter how hard they had tried.

This, Caleb knows even more intimately.

So the ice in his chest, that spidering anxiety about what they will find when they inevitably get where they’re going, remains, grows, thrives, and the fire that is his desire flickers dangerously low.

Beside them walks Vess Derogna, and absently, Caleb breaks his mantra to wonder just how they ended up here. It’s something he’s wondered more than once, as they’ve stood before Queens and Kings, monsters and demons.

Somehow, this feels so much _more_.

They _knew_. And yes, they’d left a little note, but what difference did that make? They _knew_ what he was capable of, and they still _left_ him there. Careless. Imprudent.

They have wrought this. Whatever they face, is of their own making. 

Half of him wonders what he expected, upon arrival on the Glory Run Road. That the image frozen in his mind’s eye would have remained untouched by time and the elements? That the coat – the banner of Mollymauk’s pride, of his utter self-confidence – would still be waving in the breeze? That Caduceus’ touch would have brought forth vibrant life to match he who lay dormant beneath the earth?

But the past only remains frozen so long as it is not confronted. This, too, Caleb knows.

And so, here they are, barreling forward on a singularly doomed trajectory towards the inevitable, the seat of their collective failure.

Towards a body that is familiar which likely bears the mind of a stranger.

How many times in his history has Caleb considered how he might unfreeze the past, how he might turn it malleable under his own touch, a power far greater than any other? How many times has he wished it for his own benefit? How many times has he wished it too, for others.

That path he gave up for his own reparations. But Mollymauk…

He did not deserve to die the way he had. (Neither did Caleb’s parents, but that was a _choice_. One he made. One he lives with, every day).

So lost in thought, Caleb only realizes that he’s fallen behind when Veth calls his name. She’s turn back, her black braids blowing in the wind, whipping against her face.

“Cay! Come on!”

Picking up the pace, Caleb forces back the rest of the crystalized memories, a Mollymauk who was _impossible_ , who made him feel tight in the throat, whose gaze was unrepentant and unwavering. A Mollymauk who made Caleb clench his fists in frustration, who was a buffer on the battlefield and in company, who stole attention with glee, and doled it out just as readily.

Whose one, undeniable nightmare they have seemingly allowed to come to fruition.

Who will he be, when they catch up to him?

It turns out, he doesn’t have to wait to find out.

“Look!” Jester shouts, pointing into the distance, he voice very nearly carried away in the muting suffocation of the wind and the snow. Following her angle, Caleb can see several figures in the distance. Not moving. Just, huddling. There is no good place to set up a camp, but everyone needs to rest.

Panic seizes him, a vice grip on his heart, because the past has never come to life before, no matter how hard he wished it, and now, now, he is not sure he should have ever wished it at all.

But there is no other option except to continue on.

One figure stands as they approach. The coat is black, trimmed in black fur, and frosted with snow all around, like the dusting on a donut.

The hood blows back.

The silhouette of horns, curling, the waft of palatinate hair, the blood red of gleaming eyes.

Before him, the past thawed, a body chilled, heart stopped, beats again.

The soft twitch of a smile, and hope thrills in Caleb’s heart treacherously.

“You survived the trip!” he calls out, voice biting. “And brought a friend too. I’m impressed.”

Of all the possible routes, the one Caleb hadn’t anticipated was not being able to tell the difference between the two. The hand around his heart squeezes harder still and on his inhale, the ice crystals form in Caleb’s lungs, freezing the breath uncomfortably in his throat.

Even the ice of memory melts over time.

Even his memories are fallible.

Another failure to add to the running tally.

Caleb’s gaze does not waver from their once friend the entire time. Punishment must fit the crime. And there is no worse punishment than looking into a familiar face and not knowing who is looking back out.


	4. 4. Fjord

Mostly, Fjord finds, he just can’t _believe_ it. Not that he hasn’t seen the capabilities that their clerics have; they’ve brought people back before, himself included. But those were immediate. They hadn’t the time to sink in. And really, well, his own death is the least impactful – its not as though he actually remembers anything. The rest of them hurt the worse for it than he did.

But this…this is Molly.

And alright, so he supposedly did this whole ‘rising from the grave’ thing before, sure, but it’s one thing to be told, and to nod and smile and take it for the truth.

It’s another to have the evidence of one’s eyes.

He’s right there, standing in front of them, a shadow in the white haze, and still, Fjord can’t believe it.

Mollymauk, with his trademark cocky grin, even in the bitter and unrelenting cold, has his arms spread welcoming wide.

Maybe it’s because, in Fjord’s experience, if it seems too good to be true, it is. And if one thing is always, _always_ too good to be true, its family that promises to come back. Sure, he doesn’t remember his own parents, but he does remember what it was like watching other kids in the orphanage repeat it over and over to themselves. That mom or dad said they were coming back. That they’d promised. That they wouldn’t lie.

Molly had come back, and then Molly had died. And Fjord hadn’t been there for either, so forgive him if he’s skeptical.

Some things, learned things, are hard to break away from. And believing that family will come back is top of the list. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. A lifetime of abandonment has just about proved it true. So even with Molly in front of him, Fjord struggles to reconcile with he knows with what is real.

And oh Mother Melora does he desperately hope that its true, because if it’s not…

He takes what he’s feeling and looks between the rest, compounds what he’s feeling by a factor of ten.

If it isn’t, then he doesn’t know what they’ll do.

Or how they’ll survive it.

 _If_ they survive it.

Tentatively, they all enter the hut together; that Caleb pointedly chooses not to built the mansion is telling, and Fjord tries to remain on his guard, but it’s difficult with a dead person staring him in the face, blinking occasionally.

It’s even stranger when said dead person starts talking.

When he speaks, he sounds right. And Fjord knows that its not a farce – he’s been there and done that – but there’s still something mistrusting that he can’t let go of, the small little nagging voice in the back of his head that reminds him that no one gets this lucky twice.

That no one gets to crawl out of his grave twice and wear an unaffected smile, glazed red eyes free from the haunted shade they ought to contain.

No one. Not even carefree, uninhibited Mollymauk.

“-guess I really should be thanking Cree,” he’s saying when Fjord finally snaps out of it. “I didn’t know where you were or how to find out. This is important, what we’re doing, and now that you’re here, you can help.”

Warning bells are ringing in Fjord’s head. It’s wrong. He’s wrong. He _has_ to be wrong. The Molly they knew would _never-_

“-told me about the lady who killed Lucien. And what she’s trying to do. And well, look, I still don’t give a fuck about Lucien, but this godkilling business is, well, _yikes,_ am I right?”

Fjord’s sword hand itches, but Caduceus’s fingers twitch, a halting motion, a stilling motion, warning him to wait, to be patient, and if Fjord’s learned anything since they lost Molly, it’s that Caduceus knows what he’s talking about. That when Caduceus gives advice, it’s best to heed it.

Collectively, the Nein stare at Mollymauk and Cree, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And then, Caduceus’ fingers twitch again, and Fjord’s itchy hand turns to an itchy tongue, and the words drop from his mouth before he can think them through. “Who the hell are you?”

Mollymauk’s head cocks to the side, curiously, and the ever present, plastered on smile fades.

“I am who I have always been?”

Fjord remembers - he was maybe five, six? – when he first realized that no family would ever want him, a scrawny, half-orc orphan. That no one would ever come for him. That the people who ran the orphanage had been right all along and that dreams were impossible figments, not meant to be grasped, only gazed upon.

Fjord remembers it better than he remembers his own face. Better than he remembers the first day he stood on the deck of a ship and sailed away from Port Demali.

Fjord remembers when he finally understood 'too good to be true'.

And this?

This is it. 


	5. 5. Veth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oddly, this is the only one where they don't meet. It felt complete without adding that segment, so I just left it.

They’ve spent two days in a blizzard by the time Veth realizes that even if Molly remembers, he won’t _know_ her. There’s nothing in particular that precedes the revelation. Out of nowhere, it simply hits her. He won’t look at her with recognition. He won’t know to make fun of her in just the right way, that way she hated but also kind of misses because he didn’t ever tease her _meanly_. Not that Molly couldn’t be mean. Really, when it came down to it, he was one of the meaner folks in their group. But not mean _spirited_. No, never that.

But one thought leads to another and suddenly all thing things Molly won’t know click into place.

Molly won’t understand Fjord’s voice. And he won’t know Caduceus, and then there’s the whole thing with the real Traveler, and Yeza and Luc, and Marion and the Gentleman, and everything with Caleb… And he won’t know that they stopped a war, that they fought a demon-thingy for Yasha, that Jester bargained her way out of disaster through sweets.

That they’ve fought dragons and won.

That they slaughtered Lorenzo for everything he did.

That they stood along the Glory Run Road, tears streaming down their cheeks, and promised never again.

He won’t know _any_ of it.

Veth’s heart aches.

It’s almost annoying, actually, how upset she feels. They knew him a month. One whole lousy month! But she remembers how tenderly Caleb swept aside those purple curls, and how hollow Beau’s eyes looked, and how it felt to take his limp hand in her own, and cradle it to her chest before folding it over his abdomen.

There are a lot of things she will never forget. The first time Yeza smiled at her. Holding Luc for the first time. Watching Yeza as he ran away and she remained behind. Isharnai’s laugh. Those are among the most visceral for sure.

His hand had still been warm. Maybe that’s why she remembers it so well. There was snow on the ground, and snow in the air then too, and the lingering heat of his palm on hers had been preternaturally noticeable in contrast to the unusual stillness that overcame him in death. And though she knew he’d never precisely _liked_ her, or she him for that matter, it didn’t change the fact that he’d been her friend.

She cried for him, that night.

And it had been a long time since she’d cried for anyone besides herself, or her family, or Caleb.

In the present, her tears freeze on her cheeks before she even notices that they’ve beaded forth from her eyes. It’s so _stupid_ to cry. He’s alive – or someone with that body is alive – but the point stands that alive is a good thing! Alive in the _best_ thing.

But the conversation that she and Molly had once hand, long ago, rests heavily upon her mind. She’d wanted so, _so_ badly for someone to understand her. To recognize that she _wasn’t_ herself. That what she was was _wrong_. And she’d thought – briefly, for he’d shut it down very fast – that Molly might understand. About pasts and histories.

Then, it was all she could do to think about anything other than becoming herself again.

Now, she finally understands it from Molly’s perspective. Because whoever it is that’s walking around might not _be_ Molly, in the way that she _wasn’t_ Nott. Not really.

Their experiences were mirrored, completely the opposite and the same all at once and in her heart of hearts, the yearning pours forth molasses thick. To tell him that she finally understands. To apologize, to commiserate.

She doesn’t have to blink any tears away furiously, because they’re clinging ice on her long dark lashes, but Veth sets her jaw and her diminutive form firmly. If he’d have lived, he would have come to the same understanding, she thinks, when her story came out. Just how alike they really could be. He would have done everything to help her be herself, if he’d had a chance. Because at his core, Molly was always good.

And the world needs more good. So, she vows, privately, as she stumbles along beside Caleb, that she’ll fight just as fiercely for Mollymauk as he would have for her.

He deserves to be himself. He does.

And her hopes aren’t high that who she’ll find when they catch up will match that definition.


	6. 6. Yasha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When you come with the stakes and the torches, I'll be waiting.

There is nothing that can touch her. The wind bites her ears and nose and cheeks, but she does not feel it. She is immune, a black porcelain blight on the landscape. If the sky came crashing down in giant crystal shards, she would remain, doggedly unphased.

All Yasha is lies ahead of her. Curtained away somewhere by the storm, is her heart, exposed and vulnerable to the elements, to the world. Unprotected, unsheltered, abandoned. She’ll only feel again when she can see him. She’ll only live again when she can hold him. She’ll only scream and cry and love and hate when he is safe within her embrace, tucked away forever beneath the cage of her ribs where his ghost has lived since she lost him.

Since they were ripped from one another.

Yasha’s soul is on fire, but she can’t feel a thing.

The storm brews above her, dark clouds a direct mirror to the slant of her gaze, thin and electric as she pierces the snowy veil, searching for the silhouette that is the turn of the moon against the curve of her earth, the silver light to her shadow, the unrepentant joy to her mild mannered softness, the second soul beside her own.

She can hear it, distant, subdued, but it’s there, the beating of her heart; a sound she wasn’t sure she’d ever hear again, not with that cadence, or the colour of its lustrous tone. A heart that beats the sound of her name in his lilting accent, the smarmy ridiculousness of his raucous laughter, the precious annoyance of his light snores in the low light of their shared tent.

All the little things that make up his whole.

All the little things that she never wants to live without ever again.

If there is snow beneath her feet, she doesn’t know it. If there are miles and miles to go, she doesn’t care. She would traverse to the hells and back to get him, and now that she knows where he is, where he’s heading, there isn’t a single force in the universe that can stop her.

Beau’s hand on her shoulder is the exception.

“Yasha! Wait up! You’re leaving the rest of us behind.”

She’s done it before, why should it stop her now? a little voice whispers, but it’s not Molly’s voice. The lesson from the Stormlord flashes like lightning in her mind, and she recalls the way her fingers twitched as they let go Zuala’s dream hand, the weight that had fallen away with the chains of her guilt. Molly had not been there beside Zuala. Molly had not told her to let go, to forget. Molly was ahead.

But he would not have wanted her to leave them behind, even if he understood. There was never a single time he complained about her absence, only too happy to welcome her back, as though she’d only gone for a little walk.

Back then, he’d been her only real home. But Beau’s hand is warm on her shoulder, and Yasha knows that home is bigger than it ever was before, even if its missing a few pieces. And while there are some things that can never again be made whole, or healed without blemish, Mollymauk is not one of them. He is ahead, and she will find him, but this time, she will not be alone. She has the strength of her family to help her.

For a moment – a split second – Yasha feels again.

She takes Beau’s hand in her own, and they continue forward together.

There are no words between any of the rest of them. Anything that might be spoken would have been consumed by the terrible howling of the wind. But Yasha has never needed words. Touch is a language of its own; even glances can send complex messages with the right person on the other end. Zuala’s language for Yasha was in glances, Molly’s in touches, and Yasha has become fluent in both over time. Beau’s language is in the body. How she stands and moves, how she _leans_.

Yasha has seen that language before, in Molly, directed…elsewhere. She knows what it means. It warms her frostbitten fingers enough that Beau’s calloused touch makes an impression. Squeezing it just a little, Yasha keeps her eyes ahead of her.

She doesn’t need to look at Beau to know that she’s going to stay there. Enough trust and care thread between them that Yasha can keep her eyes trained on the horizon where they belong.

Somehow, she knows – as sure as the patterned thump of his tail against her calf as they walked side by side – that she will spot them first.

She does.

The group is little more than a spot on the horizon, but Yasha gives Beau’s hand one last squeeze before letting go, sprinting forward with renewed fervour. On the wind, Beau’s rallying call to the others flutters past, and the threads between them stretch but do not break. They’ll be there, backing her up. She can rely on them.

In one desperate instant, Yasha’s wings burst forth in pure glory and she launches into the sky. The wind fights against, but he’s _there_ , he’s _waiting_ , and she _needs_ him, wrapped beneath the ephemeral surety of her winged embrace. An arrow against the warring gusts, Yasha shoots through the air. As soon as his shape coalesces from shadow into form and angle and line, she drops down, picks up her pace, the Nein rushing up behind her too, each equally driven in their goal.

The second figure – there are only two – turns – Cree – and for a moment Yasha thinks that they’re stopping. But then, she hears a shout, and sees, as she closes in on them, Mollymauk turn around, his red eyes wide, before stumbling back through the powder away from her, scrambling like a terrified dear.

”Run! Run, Lucien! Go! Just go!” Cree is calling out as she reaches for a weapon at her side. Face stern, she holds her ground before Yasha. “You can’t have him. I won’t let you hurt him.”

For the first time since they set out, Yasha falters. “I don’t want to hurt him!”

“You offered _money_. You work for the witch! From the capital! If you want him, you will do so only when I am sprayed red across the snow!”

Behind her, Yasha hears Beau’s fleet footsteps, and the myriad other unique steps of their other companions. Muscles tense, and she shoots forward again, a missile in the sky, blurring past Cree, who hisses furiously, and barrels towards Molly.

Towards…Lucien.

It takes no time at all to catch up with him. Even in the wind, her wings are more powerful than footsteps through the deep, wet snow. Even so, Yasha lands behind him, instead of before, and reaches across the space between them as though she can retie the threads that once bound them with that single simple gesture.

When he trips as he looks over his shoulder for her one last time, he does not get back, laying in the snow like a stricken animal, cornered by a hunter’s bow. In soft little puffs, his breaths smoke out from thinly parted lips. It takes a moment for Yasha to recognize it. His neck is bared. His eyes are bright. How his chest hitches, and the subtlest tremble of his lip, though the rest of him is as stock still as can be.

It wafts from him in waves. Like the opalescent sheen of planar magic she can sense it on him.

Fear.

He’s _afraid_ of her.

“I don’t want to hurt you. I’m your…”

But her voice strangles on the words, dying in the wind.

Plain as day, it’s suddenly clear to Yasha that her heart is as empty as when he rose from his first grave on the side of a lonely country road.

He’s everything to her.

_Everything._

And she is _nothing_ to him.  
  
Yasha's soul is on fire. This time, she feels it.

This time, it burns.


End file.
